Do you really know if a child is ready for the next instruction?
Teaching Tool – Conceptualizes and connects appropriate instructional designs to the learning needs of a diverse array of children, including motivation for learning, reinforcement, retention and transfer of learning, extension of learning, and readiness for future learning. (Please see the blog posted on 2/26/2013)
Teacher talk about the abundance of educational testing today can sound a lot like Samuel Coleridge’s lament in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
“…water, water everywhere
Nor any drop to drink.”
The school year calendar includes many dates committed to state, local and classroom tests, but is anyone really drinking of the data that accurately tells them “this child is ready for the next learning activities right now,” if they are to improve that child’s academic achievement? Sadly, the answer is “not enough.” So much of the data meets mandated needs. That river of data contains too much water. We need the water of data in smaller, time-sensitive modules so that we can say with confidence that “this child is ready for what they must learn next.”
A teaching tool that barely gets lip service is the opportunity for a teacher, of any subject, to consistently understand what children know, can do, and if they understand the content, skills and processes they are learning on a frequent basis. More often than not, an individual child’s readiness to learn a next set of content or skills or engage in a next thinking process is bundled in with the class. Or, it is bundled in with other children who demonstrated similar learning readiness “back when.” If a teacher is to cause an individual child to consistently achieve quality learning outcomes, the teacher must know what the child knows – consistently.
Immediately, the “Ya, buts…” form up in a long line of explanations as to why a teacher of 20 – 30 students in a class cannot consistently know the status of an individual child’s learning.
“There is not enough time in a class period to teach what needs to be taught. We would never accomplish all that we are supposed to teach in this class or grade level.”
“If I take the time to assess each child as often as you are implying, what will I do with all of the other children?”
“I am so saddled with trying to incorporate the Common Core Standards into my daily teaching that I don’t have time or energy for one more thing!”
These are two reasonable retorts. However, they fail to answer the real question. That question is, “If you don’t consistently know a child’s readiness for next learning, how can you assume that the child will learn what you propose to teach?”
Why this must be done.
We assume many things when we begin a new unit of learning. First and foremost, we assume that children recall the prior learning that is required for the new learning. And, we assume that they recall it accurately. If they do not, pre-teaching or re-teaching is required. These spot assessments check for accuracy and completeness of prior learning as readiness for next learning.
Children learn at different speeds and with different efficiencies. If this was a walking assignment, once the word “Go” is given, the progress of children begins to spread out over the course they are to walk. The same is true of their learning in a unit of instruction. Once the unit is underway, we cannot assume that all children will progress with the same rate and degree of learning. These spot assessments help us to confirm progress and correct for inaccuracies before the inaccuracies become permanent errors in thinking.
In the aggregate, it is a much more efficient use of time to spot check and correct inaccuracies and/or provide confidence in accurate learning at the time of initial learning than it is to address these errors at the end of the unit or later in the year or through summer school.
When to do.
Prior to beginning a new unit of instruction.
Prior to beginning a new area of content or set of skills or thinking processes within a unit.
Prior to the culminating assessment of the unit’s learning.
What to do.
Using backward design, formulate a task or set of oral questions that you can provide to a child(ren) that will give you an accurate description of the accuracy and completeness of the child’s understanding of what they have been learning.
Create this set of tasks or questions prior to beginning a unit of instruction so that they are aligned with the unit’s objectives (CCSS or other) and provide an incremental preparation for the child’s success on the unit’s culminating assessment activity. (Increasingly, culminating activities will not/cannot be selected response tests. They will need to/must associate with an integration of content, skills and problem solving in a reasonably complex task.)
In your daily instructional design, while children are doing independent practice or collaborative group work, sit with a child or with children in a cooperative group and give them your task or ask your questions.
This task or set of questions needs to be the same set for all children. As you would accommodate the special education learning needs of children or their ELL needs, also do so with parallel accommodations in this spot assessment. Do not simplify or reduce the quality of the task/questions or the scope of the task/questions. Expect all children to reach the same high quality learning outcomes.
In support of this.
Principals must understand and support this need through the provision of teacher aide time or rotating substitute teachers to classrooms so that subject area teachers can do spot assessments and then study and consider what they are learning through spot assessments. Again, the expense of later remediation both in terms of student learning and financial cost is greater if it is delayed.
The teacher’s capacity to consistently check for each child’s accuracy of learning and readiness for next learning should be made part of the “best practices” by which all teachers are evaluated. If this is not made important to and through the principal or teacher evaluator, then the assurance that all children are being efficiently and effectively instructed cannot be realized.